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Marathon solider takes commandA soldier born in Northwestern Ontario is about to take command of Canada's 1,200 troops in Afghanistan.Lt.-Col. Omer Lavoie of Marathon, and his battle group will deploy next Wednesday for a six-month tour of duty. They're being asked to conduct counter-insurgency, reconstruction and diplomacy operations.

Tuesday's attack was just the latest in a long line of incidents that have poisoned relations between Israel and the UN since the very beginning of their relationship. And Western media coverage of the incident has mimicked the misleading versions they provided of previous troubles, consistently insinuating that the UN has largely been to blame. A fitting example was Wednesday night's broadcast of "Insight" on CNN International. Host Jonathan Mann discussed the Khiam attack with Jonathan Paris, an academic from Oxford University who for some inexplicable reason was treated as an "expert" on the subject.

Just hours before the meeting was due to start, the Israeli Shin Bet internal Security Service arrested Abu Tir and Abu Arafa and warned them not to attend the meeting, under threats of detention. The meeting, which offered a major opportunity to obtain Shalit’s release and launch a new framework for peace, was thrown into disarray. The next day, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) invaded Gaza, and the day after both Abu Tir and Abu Arafa were abducted by Israeli forces, along with a third of the Palestinian Cabinet, provoking a predictable escalation of violence.

a US-Canadian company, has spilled cyanide, an extremely poisonous chemical, twice into rivers in its operational area.

Powering Up, One Step at a TimeBritish engineers are converting street vibrations into electricity and predict a working prototype by Christmas capable of powering facility lights in the busiest areas of a city."We can harvest between 5 to 7 watts of energy per footstep that is currently being wasted into the ground," says Claire Price, director of The Facility Architects, the British firm heading up the Pacesetters Project. "And a passing train can generate very useful energy to run signaling or to power lights."

Funding a Global-Warming SkepticVirginia's state climatologist, a University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute -- told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research. So last week, a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign to help him out, raising at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.Feds introduce fingerprint requirements for green cards, parolees, CanadiansThe federal government wants U.S. residents with green cards, parolees and some Canadians to l have their fingerprints checked every time they re-enter the U.S. by air or sea.

ALASKA REFUSES — AGAIN — TO RELEASE 2004 ELECTION DATA!The State of Alaska website shows 16 of 40 house districts with more than 200% voter turnout, Also, if you add up the vote totals from each district they come to more than 100,000 votes for state wide candidates than the summary reports show.

US voices openness to private Net controlThe United States may be willing to cede at least some of its historic control of the Internet domain name system after all, a US Commerce Department official said on Wednesday.Despite bold statements last year that seemed to indicate otherwise and ignited a worldwide debate, John Kneuer, the acting assistant secretary for communications and information, said the government "remains committed" to private management of the DNS.